State taps experts for hydrofracking review

Nov. 15, 2012

Written by

Jon Campbell

Web graphic Marcellus Shale

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ALBANY — The state has identified three experts from major universities who will soon begin assessing its plan for large-scale hydraulic fracturing.

Top faculty members from George Washington University, the University of California, Los Angeles and the Colorado School of Public Health have been tapped to review the state’s proposed guidelines for hydrofracking, according to a list obtained Thursday by Gannett’s Albany Bureau.

The experts have been told their work should be wrapped up by “mid-February at the latest,” said Lynn Goldman, dean of George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services. That would push the state’s proposed hydrofracking regulations past a Nov. 29 deadline, which would require them to be reopened to public comment.

“I think it’s easy for people in the middle of a problem to lose sight of the big picture,” said Goldman, one of the three selected by the state. “I think the three of us will be able to assist them in reviewing their work and hopefully providing some guidance where it’s needed.”

In late September, state Health Commissioner Nirav Shah was tasked with reviewing a Department of Environmental Conservation report on high-volume hydrofracking, a technique in which water, sand and chemicals are injected into deep formations like the Marcellus Shale to fracture the rock and release natural gas.

Shah’s review is nearing completion and will soon be sent to the outside experts, health department spokesman Bill Schwarz confirmed. Permits for hydrofracking with more than 300,000 gallons can’t be issued in New York until the DEC’s report -- known as the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement -- is finalized.

Along with Goldman, the other university officials who will assess Shah’s work are John Adgate, chair of the Environmental and Occupational Health Department at the Colorado School of Public Health; and Richard Jackson, chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of California Los Angeles’ Fielding School of Public Health.

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Adgate was a co-author of a widely circulated Colorado School of Public Health study in March that found fracking may have contributed to health problems for those living near gas wells. The results were based on three years of monitoring gas wells and "future study is warranted,” the report found.

Goldman headed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances during the Clinton Administration.

Energy in Depth, a gas-industry-funded group, knocked the selections, pointing to the Colorado study and a Huffington Post article authored by Goldman that called for further study of hydrofracking’s health effects. The group had previously taken issue with Adgate’s study, which it said was misleading and based on outdated information.

“It’s simply hard to imagine how a panel including the author of the most controversial health impact study in the nation ... will produce anything that resembles an objective review,” Energy in Depth spokesman John Krohn said.

On Thursday, more than 90 medical professionals sent an open letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, renewing their call for a more independent and transparent process. Shah’s review was unveiled by the state under immense pressure from advocates and fracking critics, who had sought a full analysis of gas drilling’s health impacts.

“New York's community of medical professionals reiterate our call for an independent, comprehensive health impact assessment of these risks and their attendant costs,” Andrew Coates, a physician at Albany Medical College, said in a statement. “Nothing less than a transparent investigation with full public participation is acceptable."

If the DEC’s proposed regulations aren’t finalized by Nov. 29, they likely will face another round of public comment. The agency can request a 90-day extension, but such a move would require the agency to issue an updated set of proposals and open them for 30 days of comment.

Two previous comment periods on the DEC’s review -- which was first launched in 2008 -- brought in about 80,000 submissions, according to the agency.

When announcing the health-specific review in September, DEC Commissioner Joseph Martens said his agency’s proposals won’t be finalized until the review by Shah and the independent officials are completed.

Brad Gill, executive director of the Independent Oil & Gas Association of New York, said the state must act prior to the deadline.

“The industry in New York is suffering,” Gill said. “Many families across upstate New York are relying on this process to be fair, and informed by real science and experience, not hyperbole. The long wait must end.”

The state should be “thankful for (the outside experts’) willingness to take on the critically important and complicated public health concerns,” said Katherine Nadeau, water and natural resources program director for Environmental Advocates of New York.

“But the public has not received details about this process from the administration, nor been able to access the information this review panel is to assess,” Nadeau said in a statement.